As You Wake

Danger comes for Zip McKee and Kieran Lanier once again in the second book of the In Your Dreams series. They and their families are forced to deal with each other and the secrets they've kept out of love and fear. And while Zip and Kieran find they must deal with a new twist in his sleeping disorder, a mysterious stranger reveals information that could change Kieran's life--or end it. More

Book 2 of the In Your Dreams series

Zara "Zip" McKee and Kieran Lanier thought they had put the threats from Kieran's past behind them in the first installment of the In Your Dreams series. But when danger comes for them once again, Zip, Kieran, and their families find themselves on separate summer road trips that none of them had anticipated. When all paths converge in North Carolina, the two families are forced to deal with each other and the secrets they've kept out of love and fear.

But Kieran is keeping the biggest secret of all from everyone but Zip. He hasn’t had a dream—about the future, about anything—for months. And while Zip and Kieran are grappling with what the new twist in Kieran’s sleeping disorder might mean, a mysterious stranger reveals information that could change Kieran's life--or end it.

Amy Martin wrote and illustrated her first book at the age of ten and gave it to her fourth grade teacher, who hopefully lost it in her house somewhere and didn't share it with anyone else.

The first book she published as a grown-up, In Your Dreams,was a semi-finalist in the Young Adult category of the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Competition. She has published four books in the In Your Dreams series and has a new young adult series, The Quinn Callahan Chronicles, starting in 2015.

A native of St. Charles, MO, Amy currently lives in Lexington, KY with her husband and a ferocious attack tabby named Cleo. When not writing or reading, she can usually be found watching sports, drinking coffee, or indulging her crippling Twitter habit (and, sometimes, doing all three at once).

Also in In Your Dreams

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Reviews

Review by:
Alysa H
on Feb. 05, 2014 :
It was great to see all of these characters again, and get to know more deeply those who seemed relatively inscrutable in Book 1 (e.g. Kayla and Morgan). I also appreciated that although not quite as much happens in this installment in terms of plot, we got to see a lot of loving familial and friendship interaction. Zip and Kieran's relationship is as strong as ever, but for an ultimately very minor bump, and this book allows Zip to rest on that while developing relationships with other people, and thinking about the future.

I didn't like this installment *quite* as much overall, though, because it tended to be slow. That same focus on familial relationships that I mostly appreciated also came off as too much padding at times. For example, it's nice to showcase healthy, realistic Mother-Daughter talk, but that talk is also pretty boring to read. There are also a lot of padded descriptions of what the characters are doing at any given moment. In one scene, Zip explains to Kieran and Kayla how best to access an area of the high school, via crossing over to campus from a teacher's yard. It has no bearing on events whatsoever. In another scene, Zip and Kieran are walking around a lively city area. Immersive descriptions of urban areas are generally wonderful, but we don't need to be told every single step that Zip and Kieran take. It makes it seem as though the author is trying to prove her geographic and spatial knowledge for her own sake, and not for the readers or characters. All of this stuff could have been tightened up with a more ruthless editorial hand, and it's a shame that it wasn't, because it kicked me out of the story a few times.

The last quarter or so brings some unexpected revelations and I'm truly looking forward to Book 3. I'm hoping it will bring back the pacing of Book 1, and that this "middle" book is just suffering from those padding problems not uncommon to middle-of-trilogy novels.
(reviewed long after purchase)

Review by:
Michelle McRoberts
on Jan. 12, 2014 :
This is the second book in a series about Zip McKee and her sleep afflicted boyfriend, Kieran Lanier. The first book reveals that, unbeknownst to him, Kieran's background contains dark characters that have already placed them in harm's way once.

Now, the it is possible some of that past is coming back to haunt Kieran, Zip and the Laniers again. Kieran is upset with his family for keeping from him the truth of his past, and once again that past reaches out for him.

I liked this story, but it seemed slower than the last one. There is some suspenseful build-up and mystery as to what has happened to Kieran and, of course, Zip gets into more trouble; however, the story seemed to be more of a story builder in between stories one and three than I would have liked. There were some good twists that came up, but I kept expecting them to be twistier than they were and that didn't happen in this one. I love the characters and the direction the story is going, so I will certainly continue to read them as Ms. Martin writes them.

I was provided a free copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
(reviewed long after purchase)